Being Lane Kiffin: Having irreverent fun on Twitter, winning games at FAU

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Former Southern California athletics director Pat Haden called it “the Kiffin factor.” It can be defined simply as: No matter what Lane Kiffin does, people will pay attention. There is no shortage of evidence to support this idea.

Florida Atlantic Owls head coach Lane Kiffin.

“You can freaking throw that yellow highlighter over there, and it’ll be a story somehow,” Kiffin told USA TODAY Sports. “Probably change somehow, that I was throwing it at someone.”

Sitting in his office at Florida Atlantic University earlier this week, breaking down film in advance of the Owls’ rematch with North Texas (a 69-31 Owls win) to decide the Conference USA championship, Kiffin saw himself pop onto the television screen alongside his desk. On ESPN, the topic of discussion was his most recent tweet, this one involving a story suggesting Kiffin should return to Tennessee.

“As Tennessee again finds itself engulfed in flames, Lane Kiffin waits by the phone,” began his tweet, a copy-and-paste entry from the story’s headline. “Not waiting at all! Getting this team ready to win its 9th straight game against a great (North) Texas team. Come to the championship here in Boca,” he continued, the invitation directed to the story’s author.

But the tweet was misinterpreted. The repeated headline was read as Kiffin’s own words. The line about attending the Conference USA title game was instead construed as extending an invitation to Tennessee — as in, the Volunteers’ representatives in the ongoing coaching search should come check out what Kiffin’s was accomplishing in his first season at FAU. I’d be upset if I were FAU, the host said.

“They don’t write it as if the top is in quotation marks. They actually take his name off,” Kiffin said, referring to the writer. “So they change my tweet so it looks like I’m saying, ‘Come to FAU.’ Like to the Tennessee people, or that I want the Tennessee people to come get me.”

This past weekend, a Sunday tweet with a spiritual passage — “Take each day’s happenings as opportunities for something you can do for God,” read a snippet — was instead interpreted as a message for the Tennessee fan base, which earlier that day had risen collectively to decry the university’s decision to offer its job opening to former Rutgers coach and current Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano.

“Everyone assumes that I sit and read all this stuff,” Kiffin said between bites of a late breakfast, his schedule delayed due to the Owls’ game-week preparations. “If I’m on the treadmill or something, I’ll look at something and it’ll be someone’s birthday — ‘Boy, if Lane Kiffin retweeted me!’ — and nobody wants to write about that stuff, making a kid’s day. That’s fine. It is what it is. Everyone wants to assume negative.”

It’s another example of just what it’s like to be Lane Kiffin. One of college football’s most public figures, with tweets and social-media messages parsed as much as any individual this side of President Trump, Kiffin’s notoriety — and that of FAU — isn’t hurt by the constant attention. But the attention is largely negative, or at least non-positive, which feeds into the general point of view that says Kiffin is too immature and too unbridled to be given another shot at running a major-conference program.

Several years since his ignominious firing at USC, and even longer still since his one-year run with the Volunteers, Kiffin bristles at the idea that his behavior would scare off major-conference presidents and athletics directors. Kiffin points to his own relationship with FAU President John Kelly, and how he’s accomplished in one season his two main job responsibilities: winning games and bringing eyeballs to the Owls’ program.

“The thing that I don’t get, and I’ve said it lately, when the [expletive] are you guys going to figure out it’s a (expletive) plan,” he said. “The people that don’t come here, they don’t cover us, they say I’m such a risky hire. ‘You’ve got to be very careful.’ And I say, am I missing NCAA violations? No. Am I committing crimes? How am I dangerous? What is dangerous now that I’m doing? Retweeting something funny? That’s what dangerous?”

For administrators used to a more traditional approach to running a program, Kiffin’s style since being hired by FAU last December flies in the face of convention. For years, major-conference programs have leaned toward coaches straight from central casting, with monosyllabic answers and from-the-manual platitudes. Kiffin always has been anything but, only now with a greater platform — Twitter, namely — and the freedom to be himself.

That’s not the only reason why Kiffin hasn’t received overtures from Tennessee; there’s always his one-and-done season in 2009, which only in recent months seems to have been forgiven. But it’s a factor in the Volunteers’ process. Agents tell coaches to stay vanilla for a reason: being different can backfire.

“If I was a player or if I was anyone else, everybody would laugh at it,” Kiffin said. “Where is it in writing that when you’re a coach you can’t be funny. ‘You shouldn’t be on Twitter, you shouldn’t be all this.’ Because other ADs, other presidents, some of them don’t like it. Well, guess what. Haven’t you figured it out? Maybe all those other people are phony because they’re saying the coach speak to impress those ADs and presidents.”

But don’t mistake Kiffin’s prolific Twitter presence and the attention that ensues as a plea for attention. For one, he’s Lane Kiffin — he could toil in relative anonymity and still be one of the most polarizing figures in college football.

“Part of the reason for me taking the job, by far, is not what everyone’s assumption is,” he said, “that I was taking this job because I just needed a head job, wanted to get out of Alabama and go and get one of these. That wasn’t it. I think that I’m glad now that I can prove it, because I’m not sitting out there trying to get one of these jobs, trying to jump for one of these and calling my agent every day and stuff like that.”

And just because Tennessee hasn’t shown interest — Kiffin confirmed in a radio appearance this week the school hasn’t reached out — doesn’t mean another Power Five school won’t, if not this month then in the future. It’s impossible to ignore Kiffin’s first-year success: FAU has won eight in a row entering Saturday’s rematch with North Texas, thanks to one of the nation’s top scoring offense and a dramatically improved defense.

But prospective universities won’t question Kiffin’s coaching acumen; they’ll wonder about his personality, and if he’s grown enough for another shot at leading a Power Five program. Not that it matters to Kiffin. Happy where he is and more comfortable in his own skin than ever, Kiffin isn’t begging for another chance.

“If someone doesn’t want to hire me because I’m funny on Twitter, then I probably won’t want to work for them.”